Saturday, December 1, 2012

What was Brazil's role in Operation Condor?

The head of Brazil's Justice and Human Rights Movement, Jair Krischke
stated before the Truth Committee that it was the Brazilian
dictatorship which masterminded the notorious Plan Condor, the South
American military dictatorships undercover transborder organization of
the sixties and seventies.

Krischke who has researched dictatorships for decades said that
"Brazil created the Operation Condor" which for years was unknown given
the discreet way in which Brazilians implemented international
repressive actions, in contrast with the military regimes of Argentina
and Chile that were far more evident.

The administration of President Dilma Rousseff created last May the
Truth Committee to look into the country's past between 1954 and 1988.
President Rousseff as a student leader spent over two years imprisoned
by the military regime that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

The seven-member Truth Committee includes lawyer Rosa Maria Cardoso
who in the seventies defended among others Dilma Rousseff and which the
military claimed at the time was an active member of a guerrilla
movement. Ms Cardoso is coordinator of the specific research on the Plan
Condor and received all the documents referred to the issue compiled by
Krischke.

Ms Cardoso said the committee is determined to unveil all Brazilian
actions under the Plan Condor and anticipated that for some months she
has been collecting facts and evidence that will be compiled into a
final report to be delivered to President Rousseff.

Krischke research includes documents on operations by Brazilian
agents committed at the beginning of the seventies in the region under
the administration of Dictator Emilio Garrastazu Medici who ruled from
1969 to 1974, when at the time several South American were still under
constitutionally elected governments.

Many of these crimes were committed at the beginning of the seventies
against democratic leaders and guerrillas on the run and were previous
to the formal creation of the criminal Condor organization, an
"extremely important" fact says Krischke.

In November 1975 the Chilean dictatorship under General Augusto
Pinochet coordinated a conclave with intelligence agents and military
from South America in which the Condor Plan was formally
institutionalized for the purpose of coordinating transborder repressive
actions plus the creation of an exchange network of intelligence
gathering.

Representatives from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay signed the minutes
of the clandestine meeting in Santiago as well as the delegates from the
Brazilian military government of then General Ernesto Geisel
(1974/1979) which always acted with greater caution than the rest of
their partners in crime.

"Dictatorships exchanged information, prisoners and coordinated
killings in clandestine operations with no respect for international or
diplomatic rules" said Krischke in Brasilia before the Truth Committee.

After going through hundreds of documents, traveling extensively in
the region and advising Italian courts, Krischke argues that even when
the Condor Plan started to operate as such following the 1975 secret
summit, the transnational repressive methodology with support from
agents belonging to different countries is something the Brazilians were
already implementing at least since 1970.

"Condor from 1970 to 1974 was not called as such, it had not been
created as such yet, but it was already in action through an
international network invented by the Brazilian military with the active
support from Brazilian diplomats who had set up a very efficient
espionage system", revealed Krischke.

LinkWithin

RP

Connecting the dots between different events that go unreported (or under-reported), as a whole, in our mainstream media. Come learn what many do not know, but what many are waking up to. Knowledge is power.